I’m Still Becoming with Jo Brooks

On this week’s episode of The True North Show I am joined by Jo Brooks, an incredibly amazing woman who has been through it all in business and still is filled with love and gratitude for everything she has learned on her journey. Jo shares with me how important mental health and wellbeing is for her, particularly in the last 5 years and how competition doesn’t need to be with spite and elbows. I knew our conversation would be inspirational and I am filled with so much gratitude for the many “ah-hah” moments I had too! This is definitely a conversation you will not want to miss.

Jo Brooks has spent nearly 30 years in business and education, and most of that time watching brilliant people fall into the same trap: they’re so good at what they do, they end up stuck doing it one client at a time.

Her work is about freeing them from that.

Through her Gold Coast business, Navig8, Jo helps founders, coaches and subject-matter experts make the leap from one-to-one to one-to-many – taking the expertise locked in their heads and building it into courses, programs and systems that serve far more people without burning the expert out.

It’s done-with-you, not done-to-you: she gets in beside her clients and builds the thing alongside them.

Her work also spans RTO compliance consulting, course and program development, and the quiet, behind-the-scenes systems thinking that holds a business together. But the method came the hard way. Jo once built a significant business fast by collaborating with the very people she was meant to compete against, then watched it move through a seven-year liquidation.

That long, public undoing could have ended her. Instead, it became the foundation of everything she teaches. Out of it came her guiding philosophy, Circle Over Competition, and her signature C.O.L.L.A.B.O.R.A.T.E. framework, the belief that we rise further together than we ever will elbowing each other out of the way.

Since then she has founded more than 17 businesses and earned her MBA, but the numbers were never the point. What people remember about Jo is the way she keeps choosing courage over certainty. She leads with surgical honesty rather than polish and is the first to admit she hasn’t arrived. As she puts it: “Courage to begin. Discipline to build. Wisdom to let go. Grace to receive.” And, just as readily: “I’m still becoming – and I love the journey.”

When she’s not building something with someone, Jo is most likely walking the beach near home or caring for her elderly mother, the grounding work that keeps her honest about what actually matters.

Social Media:

Website: https://navig8biz.com/

Transcript:

[00:33] Megan North:
Hello and welcome to the True North Show. I’m your host Megan North. Today I am thrilled to welcome Jo Brooks, an incredible woman who has spent nearly thirty years in business and education, and most of that time watching brilliant people fall into the same trap. They are so good at what they do that they end up stuck doing it one client at a time. Jo’s work is about freeing them from that.

Through her Gold Coast business Navigate, Jo helps founders, coaches, and subject matter experts make the leap from one-to-one to one-to-many, taking the expertise locked inside their heads and building it into courses, programs, and systems that serve far more people without burning out the expert.

Her philosophy was forged the hard way. Jo once built a significant business fast by collaborating with the very people she was meant to compete against, then watched it move through a seven-year liquidation. That long and very public undoing could have ended her, but instead it became the foundation of everything she now teaches.

Out of that experience came her guiding philosophy: circle over competition, and her signature collaborate framework, a deep belief that we rise further together than we ever will elbowing each other out of the way. Since then, Jo has founded more than seventeen businesses and earned her MBA. But what most people remember about Jo is not the numbers. It’s the way she keeps choosing courage over certainty.

As she puts it to herself: courage to begin, discipline to build, wisdom to let go, and grace to receive. She is still becoming, and she loves the journey.

Jo, welcome to the True North Show. I’m just really, really thrilled that you’re here today.

[02:52] Jo Brooks:
What a wonderful introduction. Thank you. I’m excited.

[02:56] Megan North:
Jo built something significant, watched it go through a seven-year liquidation in full public view, and then got back up and built again, seventeen more times.

Jo, let’s start right at the beginning. What was the defining moment that led you to pursue your true passion and purpose? And in particular, why education?

[04:32] Jo Brooks:
Education is something that just sort of took its own pathway, in the way a lot of careers do. I was working in a corporate job, I was a commercial finance broker for a large organisation, and we had franchised. I remember asking my boss a question: the entry point for our industry is a certificate four. What if we wrote a diploma and asked our franchisees to genuinely be one inch above the crowd and do things better and at a higher level than what is required as industry standard?

He said: great idea, Joanne. Put a business case to me.

So I spent the next twelve months writing the diploma of mortgage broking management through Deakin University. I got the partnership, we wrote it together, and we ended up registering fifty franchisees. We were the first finance broker organisation in the country to franchise at that level. And we set the bar higher than industry standard, which set us apart.

[06:03] Megan North:
And what is it about education itself? Did you love school? Do you love learning?

[06:09] Jo Brooks:
I did love school and I did well at it. I became a studier because I didn’t really have much choice. When I was in grade three, so about seven or eight, television arrived. Every other family got to watch it in the evenings. My siblings and I were not allowed to watch television at night, right through to grade twelve. So from very young I was sent to my bedroom to do my homework, whatever homework there might have been at that age.

That became a rhythm I just kept through to when I left school at eighteen. Every night was spent studying and relearning. And it served me well. I liked the thrill of getting a good mark. Except chemistry. I didn’t do so well in that, but that wasn’t my passion anyway. That was something my dad wanted me to do.

When I finished school I got accepted into university. I wanted to do an accounting degree. My dad was very old school. He had two older sons who had gone into education, but he wouldn’t allow me to go. This was 1980. He told me to go and get a job. So I sat the banking exams, got a job, and then thought: if I can’t go to university, I’ll go to TAFE.

It took me seven years, two nights a week, three hours each night, nearly an hour each way, to get my diploma in accounting. A ridiculously long time, but I did it. The bank supported me and paid for it, I got promotions, and I learnt that bettering myself through education gave me better career opportunities. And that kept proving to be true.

I then moved to Brisbane, started writing commercial finance, and then started teaching people how to do that. It just became a natural transition.

I cannot tell you how many certificates and diplomas I have now. You mentioned I have my MBA. I always wanted to do that university thing I was never given the chance to do as a young woman. I completed it last year at sixty-three. It came in the mail and there were tears. I didn’t do it for the letters. I did it because I always wanted to know what it was like to go to university.

[09:00] Megan North:
I bet that would have felt extraordinary.

[09:04] Jo Brooks:
It really did. Now I can put letters after my name. But that wasn’t the reason. It just felt good. Really good.

[09:22] Megan North:
Congratulations. And there is something really beautiful about teaching, isn’t there? Watching the lights go on in someone.

[09:31] Jo Brooks:
Yes. You see that bing, bing, bing, and you go: I get it. Yes.

[09:40] Megan North:
And I learn too. I love learning from the people I’m sharing wisdom with as well.

[09:48] Jo Brooks:
I agree completely. I often feel that I’m not the expert in the room when I’m doing group mentoring. They’re teaching me and teaching each other. That’s the beauty of group work. The conversation is rich and you learn so much.

[10:10] Megan North:
Yes. So when your business went into liquidation, what was the moment you decided this was not going to be the end of the story? Do you remember making that decision? Was it a feeling?

[10:27] Jo Brooks:
Yes. The liquidation happened fast. We were an education company here in Australia and some decisions were made that we simply couldn’t keep the business going. The board called an emergency meeting, we made the decision, I went home, told my husband and daughter, walked into my bedroom, closed the door, and sank to the floor. I was absolutely in a foetal position.

I have no idea how long I stayed there. But at that point in my life, my daughter was just finishing her grade twelve at a very expensive private school. My husband had diabetes and had retired. I was the only breadwinner. And I remember sitting on that floor thinking: this is as low as I’m going to get. So I have to pick myself up.

And I did.

My business partner was incredibly kind. He said to my husband: take her away for a week and give her a break. So we went, no phone. My husband kept asking where we were going, and I said: I have no idea, I don’t have my phone. He didn’t have a smartphone. So we just explored. We went out to Warwick and into the wineries. It was actually quite funny in hindsight.

That was a very gracious thing my business partner did. And when I came back, there was a lot of paperwork, a lot of phone calls, a lot of people to deal with. And I needed to find a job. So I rang my old mentor, the fellow I had worked for in the finance broking days, went and sat in front of him and said: I need a job. He said: you’re on, let’s go.

[12:22] Megan North:
I love that you let yourself get there first. And that you allowed that week, because I imagine it gave you time to feel it, grieve it, acknowledge it. Rather than just toughening up and moving forward.

[12:56] Jo Brooks:
Yes, it was a tough time. We decided to sell our house, sold every asset we had to pay company debt. We had the biggest garage sale known to man on acreage. Had to go and find a place to rent and came down to the Gold Coast to be closer to my mum and so I could still drive up to Brisbane for work, which I did every day for three years.

But the liquidation itself had a lot of moving parts. Government agencies, ATO, ASIC, the liquidator. It’s not a fun process. It’s quite brutal and very black and white. But I have to say, Megan, that so many lessons came out of it.

One of the golden moments was actually getting most of my staff employed by my competitors. I picked up the phone, rang a competitor, said: I’m closing my business, I have one hundred and ten staff, how many do you want? They took a significant number. They also audited our files and we passed with flying colours. So that was good to know we had been doing things well.

But I’ll always remember the day I announced the closure to the whole team. We didn’t have Zoom then. I had all four offices dialled in on the phone system, about thirty or forty people in Brisbane alone, and I said: I’m closing the doors today.

This was early November. I could have strung them along closer to December, but I wasn’t going to do that to my staff. I didn’t want to tell them just before Christmas that they’d lost their jobs. I wanted to give them time.

And then I asked: who might hang around unpaid to help empty the office so I can sell the furniture before the liquidators take it? I wanted to pay some bills.

Ninety-five percent of them stayed.

Then this circle of thirty or forty people just came around me in a big football hug. I went up to my office, tears, feeling pretty rough. And one of my senior staff members came in and handed me a card. He said: no, we bought that yesterday. We had a sense something wasn’t going well. We didn’t know this was the decision, but we wanted you to have this. To say we support you. Whatever happens next.

And today some of those people are still my friends.

[16:39] Megan North:
So beautiful.

[16:41] Jo Brooks:
I’ve often reflected on what had them feel that way. And I think it was the little things. Every office I was in, I’d walk in and say good morning to every single person. How’s your day? How’s your partner? How’s the five-year-old? It could take me a few hours before I could start my actual work day because there were so many people. But I felt it was important that they knew: I see you, I hear you, I acknowledge what you’re doing for this business.

[17:35] Megan North:
That’s true leadership.

[17:38] Jo Brooks:
Thank you.

[17:40] Megan North:
And that’s really all any of us want, isn’t it, as a human and as an employee. To just be seen, treated well, and treated with kindness. It’s not actually that difficult.

[17:55] Jo Brooks:
Not hard at all. Good morning Sarah, how are you? How’s Bobby the five-year-old? What are you doing today? Just looking them in the eyes and saying: I know I’m busy and I’m not here as often as I’d like, but when I’m here, I’m really here.

[18:21] Megan North:
Beautiful. And so what about mental health and wellbeing? Has that played a part across your journey? Is it something that has evolved?

[18:35] Jo Brooks:
It certainly wasn’t something instilled in me growing up. I would say it’s something I now practise proactively more than ever, particularly in the last five years. I did seek out counselling and support during the difficult times. I had mentors around me. I went back to work for my lifelong mentor, a man I’ve known for twenty-eight years, who has always been a wonderful support.

I’ve always understood the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people, people whose advice you should actually pay attention to because they have the credibility for it. I have a whole bunch of beautiful girlfriends who have never run a business. They share their perspective with love. But I know that advice has a different weight.

About five years ago I subscribed to Mindvalley, which introduced me to meditation. I started doing it every day. I jumped into a twenty-eight-day program, then a forty-five-day program, and just went: wow, I feel lighter for it.

My word for this year is space. Space for me, space for my clients, space for family. Just space. When I need a break, I’ll stand on the grass, or my husband takes me for a walk on the beach, or I literally sit on the floor of my study, close the door, and take some moments. The power of the mind, I can’t emphasise enough how much it impacts what you want in life and the goals you have. I continually surprise myself with the epiphanies that come from those still moments.

Late last year I had a realisation about some work I’d been doing. I was receiving a lot of consulting work around registered training organisations, something I’d never promoted, and it was keeping the food on the table. But I had a human design profile done, and a conversation with a friend who looked at it and said: your profile needs rest, and you’ve been pushing the rope on something that nobody’s actually buying from you intentionally.

The moment I made the decision to stop, I felt lighter. Just so much lighter. I stopped pushing a rope. You can’t get anywhere pushing a rope. But if you pull one, you might get somewhere. And the minute I stopped, the work I actually wanted to do started arriving.

[24:20] Megan North:
And from a mental health perspective too, your brain is getting proper rest because you’re standing on the grass and going for walks. People get overwhelmed thinking they have to meditate for an hour and gym for an hour every day. Sometimes five minutes of sun completely shifts everything.

[25:16] Jo Brooks:
Yes. Now I do fifteen minutes of Pilates on the study floor, then a half hour walk with my husband at five, five-thirty in the morning. Then I get my mum sorted. She’s ninety-five and I care for her here at home. And at some point I’m at my desk. There are lots of breaks, but when I do need to focus completely, the door is closed.

[26:12] Megan North:
And from a grounding point of view, is it the feet on the grass or the water that really brings you back?

[26:12] Jo Brooks:
Yes. It’s literally a tingle that goes down my entire body. I know what grounds me: feet on the grass, or walking along the edge of the water on the beach. I’m not an outdoorsy person in the hiking sense, but give me a walk on a beach once a day and I’m a different person. On weekends we do it morning and night. In summer I have a swim. It’s half an hour. We live close, it doesn’t take long, but it’s an incredible reset. The stress of the morning is gone. Now I’m ready to go again.

[27:19] Megan North:
And I think that’s also why you can do the same amount of work in less time. Your mind is clear, your brain is rested, your focus is fully there.

[27:16] Jo Brooks:
Exactly. It needs to be. Yes.

[27:19] Megan North:
I love it. So most people in business are taught to protect their ideas and guard their territory. What made you go the complete opposite direction and collaborate with your competitors?

[27:38] Jo Brooks:
It’s such a good story. When we were building the big company, I thought: online is hard, what can we do to improve our completion rate? So I acquired businesses that supported the learning. An accounting firm, law firm, HR company, marketing company, IT company, finance broker, financial planning company. When someone came through our door and enrolled, we didn’t just give them a diploma. We gave them accounting advice, a marketing strategy, a website build, financial advice, a plan. Everything to help them build a genuinely solid business with deep foundations. That was collaboration right at the core of the model.

Then we applied for government funding and were told it would take two years. I wasn’t waiting that long. So I asked: who’s got funding? Because registered training organisations appear on a public government register, I sent my sales team to find organisations with the same qualification and unused funding, and we knocked on their doors.

I opened everything up. I gave them a one-page business plan, showed them the customer journey on an A3 sheet, showed them the CRM. I said: I’m going to charge seven times what you charge. The same amount it costs you to deliver this yourself, I will pay you just for the licence to use your funding. You don’t have to do anything. And you can view our data for six months, then I’ll just send you reports.

Some said no, absolutely. But five said yes, including large organisations running sixty-five thousand students a year. They could see they were the Queen Mary and we were the speedboat. They simply couldn’t do what we could. But they could earn good income from the arrangement. So we collaborated.

We went from five students a month to two hundred a week. And I had the audacity to knock on the doors of organisations doing sixty-five thousand students a year when we were doing five a month.

[32:00] Megan North:
And I love that you found five who had the same way of thinking. Collaboration is so much more powerful than competition.

[32:08] Jo Brooks:
Yes. Because I was also a registered training organisation myself, I understood the risk and governance. I made sure they got everything they needed for their reporting, and I let them into my database with viewing rights so they could see conversations, emails, student progress. Because I was the one putting their licence at risk. And they went: fair enough.

It was about being prepared to be vulnerable and to let them look under the hood. And I also told them upfront: as soon as I get my own funding, we’re out. I was transparent from day one. By that point, we’re all good friends and everything is sweet.

[33:27] Megan North:
Yes. And there are nine billion people in the world. There is no way I could coach everyone, and no way you could be the only provider of education for everyone. The competitive mindset still astounds me.

[33:56] Jo Brooks:
I know. And I still live this way today. Collaboration will always be my biggest success metric. I’m having conversations right now with another organisation that creates online corporate training. We do similar things but for completely different audiences. There’s probably going to be people I come across that I’m not right for, and vice versa. And there may be things I do that enhance what they do, and vice versa.

Sadly, I’ve had this conversation with many coaches who say: you have nothing to teach me. It’s interesting. And how many coaches don’t have a coach?

[34:58] Megan North:
I know. I’ve got three on the go at any one time.

[35:02] Jo Brooks:
Yes. I surround myself with all sorts of people, whether it’s formal or not. I have a sales coach, a LinkedIn coach. I don’t know it all.

[35:13] Megan North:
And I want my clients to know that I’m constantly levelling up myself. When I have an aha moment with my own coach, that trickles straight down to the people I work with.

[35:21] Jo Brooks:
Completely. Common sense to me. Yeah.

[35:45] Megan North:
So when someone comes to you completely overwhelmed and trapped in the one-to-one model, what is usually the first thing you help them see?

[35:52] Jo Brooks:
So a lot of people will come to me and say: I want to create an online course but I don’t want to write it from scratch. And what I say is: let’s do an inventory of what you already have.

You’ve written a book? Great, you’ve got content. You post articles and blogs on social media? Good. You speak on podcasts, webinars, masterclasses? You do a lot of one-on-ones? Wonderful. So you already have all of that. What I’m going to help you do is pick up all the words that didn’t make it into those resources. The chapters that got cut from the book due to printing costs and deadlines. The things you couldn’t go deep enough on in a one-on-one because the next client was waiting. The insights from the speech that got cut for time.

We pull it all together and put it into an online course that feels to your clients as though you’re giving them a great big hug and they can go wider and deeper with you than they ever thought possible. And then they go: I’ve already got it. Yes. You’ve already got it. You don’t have to start from scratch. Just put it all in a Google Drive and let me make sense of it.

[37:50] Megan North:
So it’s also helping them get out of their own heads and see what they already have.

[37:59] Jo Brooks:
Exactly. Because so often they’ve got so much. I’ll ask: how many words did you take out of the book? How many chapters got cut? And they’ll say: oh, loads. And I’ll go: what are you doing with all of that? Right. Let’s bring it back together.

[38:41] Megan North:
I love that. And when I was reading out your bio, you made a comment I noticed. Is there anything from it that really stuck with you? Something you’re really proud of?

[38:56] Jo Brooks:
I just feel proud that I keep picking myself up. Life happens and business is hard. I learnt that a long time ago. And there will always be something, for people across the globe there is always a liquidation, a bankruptcy, a COVID, a GFC, a war, there is always something. And I seem to have this capability to find the opportunity in it, to see what the golden moments are, and to go: okay, next. That’s done. Don’t dwell on it.

Did I wish it didn’t happen? Absolutely. But there have been some truly golden moments along the way. And I know I’m not done. And that’s exciting. I’m excited for what’s next.

[39:56] Megan North:
So what does the rest of 2026 and 2027 look like for you?

[40:05] Jo Brooks:
For my husband and I, we are saving to buy our own home again. We haven’t owned our own home since the liquidation. By the end of next year, I want that back. And the interesting thing is that the property we once had, on acreage with I don’t know how many sheds full of tools, is so far from what we want now. We want a three-bedroom house, two bathrooms, a nice yard for the dog, somewhere close enough for a walk.

The desire for the great big things is simply not there anymore.

A very personal one for me is to see my mum out. She’s ninety-five and a half, and I don’t know how long I have with her. That makes me emotional. But I feel very blessed to be able to look after her. She’s extraordinary. She sits at the sewing machine for about eight hours a day making reversible bags, which she gives away or trades for free fruit and veg at the local greengrocer. And she came to me yesterday about some nice material and said: Joanne, I think I want to make a vest. I said: a vest? She said: yes. Will you wear it? Yes, yes, it’ll go beautifully with my bone pants.

So I’ve ordered her a pattern. She hasn’t used a pattern in about fifty years. We have a project.

[41:37] Megan North:
And do you think that energy, the just always working, always being of service to others, do you think that comes from your mum?

[41:42] Jo Brooks:
Absolutely. My mother went back to work at sixty as a nurse and worked for another twenty years as a theatre nurse. She only resigned because she was hit in the head by a golf ball and the concussion meant she could no longer work. She hated not working. She has sewn ever since. A few years ago she told me: Joanne, don’t get cross, but I’ve been taking these bags to the local greengrocer and they sell them and I get free fruit and veg. And I said: way to go, Ma. Free haircuts, free fruit and veg.

[42:20] Megan North:
Fantastic. Her energy must just be so invigorating to be around.

[42:36] Jo Brooks:
It absolutely rubs off. She’s an amazing woman. Yeah.

[42:40] Megan North:
Beautiful. Have you got a client example you could share, someone who came to you overwhelmed and where they are now?

[42:55] Jo Brooks:
Absolutely. I have a client who is a chartered practising accountant. She came out of corporate, started her business, and said: I’ve written a book, around twenty-five to thirty thousand words. I want to turn it into a course. It was just a Word document and she had no idea how to begin.

We have worked through it together. Chapter one became module one, chapter two became module two. She’s a local woman, I see her at networking events and all over social media. And all she does now is talk about her course that is coming. And I had to get her comfortable with recording herself rather than using stock video footage.

She is now all over LinkedIn. On screen, talking about her business, showing up as herself. And I told her: people buy you first, and then your course. Don’t worry if you stumble or forget what you were going to say. People love the human. And she got it.

[43:45] Megan North:
That visibility is so important. And I think for anyone listening, I would never buy from someone I couldn’t find somewhere online. If you’re not visible, I’m not buying.

[44:33] Jo Brooks:
Exactly. And that’s the failure of so many online courses. Students are promised live engagement and instead get recorded webinars. Please don’t do that. Recorded video has its place as an additional resource, but it is not the core content. It’s just lazy. And it’s not the truth of what you promised.

[45:00] Megan North:
Yes. And a couple of my coaches have actually said to me: Megan, we clearly don’t need to work on your visibility.

[45:02] Jo Brooks:
You nail it. Absolutely.

[45:23] Megan North:
So if someone’s listening and they feel a connection to what you’ve shared today, what would you suggest as their next step?

[45:23] Jo Brooks:
I would just love a conversation. The overwhelm doesn’t need to be there. You don’t have to start from scratch. You’ve already got the content.

And the only other thing I would say is to watch your pace. Building a thirty million dollar business in twenty-four months was its undoing. Growth is wonderful. Just be mindful of how fast you’re moving.

[46:00] Megan North:
Yes. And the pace thing comes in different forms. Sometimes we’re so excited about creating something and then a week in, if it hasn’t taken off, we can give up.

[46:01] Jo Brooks:
I know. And I say to clients: eighty percent is perfection. Don’t pursue one hundred. And you can take your course to market once module one is done. You don’t have to have the whole thing finished. My CPA client chose to have two modules ready before she launched and is building the rest behind her as she goes. That’s perfectly valid. You can take it to market much faster than you think.

[46:56] Megan North:
I’m getting quite a few aha moments from you right now.

[47:10] Megan North:
And from a reflection point of view, do you have a practice for looking back on where you’ve come from? An annual reflection, a weekly one?

[47:32] Jo Brooks:
Every morning I wake up and think about three to five things I’m grateful for. Sometimes it’s something from a long time ago. Sometimes it’s something from yesterday, like my mother wanting to make a vest. I’m going to facilitate that come hell or high water. If my ninety-five-and-a-half-year-old wants to learn how to sew from a pattern again, I’m in.

She comes to me and says: can I have an ice cream, Joanne? A, you don’t need to ask me. And B, if you want five today, I’ll give you five. I’m grateful for all of that.

[48:10] Megan North:
And I love that it’s a daily practice, because high achievers often forget to look back, even from last week to this week. It’s so important.

[48:29] Jo Brooks:
It just happens naturally. Sometimes it’s just on the walk to get the morning coffee with the dog. And I puzzle sometimes at people running or walking with their earphones in for the whole thing. You’re in the most beautiful environment. Why aren’t you saying thank you to the tree for the shade it’s giving you? I want to be present on my walk. Not distracted. That’s just not my thing.

[49:05] Megan North:
My husband sometimes says to me: I think you need to go and hug a tree.

[49:09] Jo Brooks:
Trees are incredible. Did you know they sing? If you put electrodes on them, an orchestra comes out of a tree. Incredible. They’re incredible.

[49:20] Megan North:
Yes. I get guided to particular trees on my walks. We have lots of gum trees and sometimes one will just ask me to put my hand on it, or I get the sense I need to stop and connect. And I love finding faces in tree trunks.

[49:46] Jo Brooks:
Yes! So fun.

[49:55] Megan North:
Beautiful. So beautiful. I knew this conversation would fly. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left. So the same question I ask all of my guests before we close: what is one lesson or truth that you’ve learned on your journey that you wish you had known earlier?

[50:24] Jo Brooks:
I’m going to take two if that’s alright.

The first is pace. Pace was so important. I remember when we were doing two hundred students a week and I felt like I couldn’t get off the wheel. It was going too fast, but if I stepped off, the whole thing would collapse. And that’s exactly what happened. If we had stretched it out and paid more attention to the micro moments, things would have been very, very different.

The second is circle. Surround yourself with people who can support you, lift you, challenge you, guide you, and hold you to accountability. I call myself the circle builder because of this. And know that the circle will shift and change constantly. Mine does all the time.

But also have the sense to know that when people who love you but don’t have the experience give you guidance, you can receive it with love and send it back. My mother asks me when I’m going to stop working tonight. My beautiful girlfriends who have never owned a business ask when I’m going to retire. I receive it all with love. I know it comes from care. And that’s all I need to take it for.

[51:51] Megan North:
Pace and the right circle of people. And knowing the difference between commentary given from love and guidance given from experience.

[52:19] Jo Brooks:
Exactly. Receive the love. Act on the credibility.

[52:28] Megan North:
Thank you so much for being here today. I am just filled with love, gratitude, and joy.

[52:34] Jo Brooks:
You’ll be on my gratitude list tomorrow morning, I feel. I love these conversations. They’re so rich.

[52:42] Megan North:
Really beautiful. And you are just so inspiring. Thank you for that. I’d also like to thank all of my amazing and dedicated audience, my supporters, and my sponsors. Thank you so much. I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of the week and I’ll see you all again next week. And again, thank you so much, Jo.

[52:58] Jo Brooks:
Thank you. I appreciate you.